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What fossil fuels are doing to our oceans

newhumanist.org.uk

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Re: What fossil fuels are doing to our oceans

#121

Post by TeMPOraL »

bamboozled wrote: post #116
parhurs wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say those are hard and seemingly-neglible-impact things, and that's why the general populace don't do those sorts of things. I see a parallel with being afraid of flying but not driving; people are not very rational or good at assessing impact. There's no reason not to change our habits, further, there's a positive feedback loop for vegetarianism: more consumer, more products, more consumers. If you want to a…

I would say those are hard and seemingly-neglible-impact things, and that's why the general populace don't do those sorts of things. God help us...

Welcome to Humanity 101.

Re: What fossil fuels are doing to our oceans

#122

Post by anotherturn »

agumonkey wrote: post #120
anotherturn wrote: post #10

It's not really enough to read and upvote, but I'm at a loss as to what I can personally can do about this. So in the spirit of the askhn "how would you turn around Twitter" - let's apply the same thinking to this: "how would you fix the oceans "? There must be some practical steps that one or many of the hn audience can execute?

Same for a lot of other issues: - society - forest - health - education - thermal insulation - homeless The web make you feel connected .. but to all the wrong projects. I'm going to redirect the efforts toward "physical" change from now on.

There is plenty in the world that needs fixing. But as is the case with startups - if you try work on everything nothing works.

Focused* effort brings about the greatest likelihood of success.

*I realize I'm being a bit hypocritical as I'm proposing working on fixing oceans (which will have plenty of added benefits wrt climate change etc.) as a side project to bring about change; in addition to my full time freelance dev work.

Re: What fossil fuels are doing to our oceans

#123

Post by TeMPOraL »

bamboozled wrote: post #114
TeMPOraL wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it isn't. But the marginal impact is. That's the difference between "go vegetarian" vs. "convince millions to go vegetarian". I'm asking for things a skilled individual can do that would have larger marginal impact that changing one's own dietary habits.

Sadly, this attitude has been the problem for too long now, it might be our undoing. The common individual waits for some authoritative direction, without taking any immediate action or responsibility of their own. The individual somehow believes they won't have an impact, failing to realize they're part of the same system as everyone else and, it's the sum of all our behaviour that has got us to this crisis point. I…

I'm not saying don't make the individual-level changes. Do them, sure. But that - talking about personal responsibility - is exactly the "old way" that isn't working. I'm looking for impactful things that one can do beyond personal changes.

> Don't forget the power of influence. It's monkey see, money do with us humans!

Sure, marketing / propaganda / public outreach is a very good example of things I'm looking for! However, I assume most people here are better at building than talking, so that's why I asked for examples in which one can apply engineering skills.

Re: What fossil fuels are doing to our oceans

#124

Post by TeMPOraL »

noselasd wrote: post #115
TeMPOraL wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it isn't. But the marginal impact is. That's the difference between "go vegetarian" vs. "convince millions to go vegetarian". I'm asking for things a skilled individual can do that would have larger marginal impact that changing one's own dietary habits.

As the problem is really a compound of millions of people and not any one indivdiual, the answer is then really nothing - bar more unrealistic options such as becoming a dictator and banning fossil fuel, or become a genie and invent an engine running on water. The more realistic approach is to change ones own behavior where possible - get an electric car, demand your electricity company switch to clean tech, switch t…

I disagree. There is a whole spectrum between "change your own behaviour" and "become a global dictator". It's a spectrum of influencing people around you. Marketing and persuasion are ways to directly influence people, but there are also many more ways to do that indirectly - e.g. creating / improving technologies that change the default behaviour of people for the better. To use a simple example - switching to renewables would not possible without people inventing ways to economically extract power from renewables.

Re: What fossil fuels are doing to our oceans

#125

Post by TeMPOraL »

adrianN wrote: post #119
TeMPOraL wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I think useful change can only be made using political means. Write your representatives and tell them how you feel. Vote for politicians who want to change things. I like technical solutions because they're undemocratic - they can step around conflicting short-term agendas and force change by exploiting market / people's preferences. In the day and age when climate is at best a very distant concern for most pe…

Improving local infrastructure to improve walkability and prioritize cycling over cars helps, but in the near term we need to stop producing GHGs completely. So unless you have a found a cheap way to get fusion power to market in the next fifteen years or so, or have grid scale power storage up your sleeves, a large scale, expensive shift of our whole economy seems necessary. I don't see how you can do that without p…

Politics will necessarily have to be a part of it - even if you could bring fusion power to market in the next decade. Politics responds to the shape of the solution landscape, so I see working on technologies (and "social technologies") as one way to influence it, with possibly better ROI than just voting for people who promise to "fix things".

(Also, voting is really a low-hanging fruit, so the best response here would probably be "why not both?".)

My worries about engaging directly in politics - becoming a politician - is that I see it as a very inefficient process, in which you'll have to give away most of your morality (and possibly interest in the original problem) before you get in a position to effect big changes.

Re: What fossil fuels are doing to our oceans

#126

Post by gd1 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #56
danvdragos wrote: post #42

Reading this struck me: What is the difference between primordial volcanoes and human pollution? During the dinosaur age it was a lot hotter [0] and there were really extraordinary organisms. Further reading seems to go down a rabbit hole [1],etc. [0] http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2014/07/11/what-geology-has-to-... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/apr/21/ice...

The difference is that during primordial times, we did not have all our infrastructure built out across the globe. Although global warming is often talked about in "bad for the Earth" terms, really, the Earth will be just fine. It's been through worse. Global warming is scary because it's bad for human societies. We built our cities and farms and national boundaries in certain places based on the climate we have had.…

Why don't they say that then?

I rate the claim that the 'planet is in danger' or 'life on earth is threatened' false. Four pinocchios.

Re: What fossil fuels are doing to our oceans

#127

Post by TeMPOraL »

nkoren wrote: post #111
TeMPOraL wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see people mentioning things like "become a vegetarian" or "bike to work", but those are easy and neglible-impact things. Sure, they'd have a huge effect if half of the population suddenly adopted them, but that's not going to happen - so just going vegetarian yourself and calling it a day is not really helping anything. What I'd love to see is a list of high-impact work one could use their skills to help with. May…

Agreed. This is not a problem that is tractable on an individual level. Sure, if everyone became a vegetarian and cycled to work and only partook of goods and services that were part of a circular economy, then the world would be a place. But that's not going to happen, because in many places, food choices (and food culture ) is terrible; cities are designed in cycling/pedestrian-hostile ways; the circular economy ju…

Thanks for the detailed response. That's exactly the kind of things I was looking for.

Of course none of those points are something a single individual can tackle, but what I'm thinking about is to:

- identify broad areas in which changes / development could meaningfully help with the problem (like you started doing with this list)

- rank them on impact potential

- subdivide them into smaller areas

- use that as a reference for what to work on, and encourage people to work on that

- track progress in these areas (this alone is a good list item; I haven't really seen anything yet that does a good job of tracking how solutions for big problems are progressing)

EDIT:

Regarding Podaris, how is the project turning out in the real world? Do urban planners use it?

Re: What fossil fuels are doing to our oceans

#128

Post by agumonkey »

anotherturn wrote: post #122
agumonkey wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for a lot of other issues: - society - forest - health - education - thermal insulation - homeless The web make you feel connected .. but to all the wrong projects. I'm going to redirect the efforts toward "physical" change from now on.

There is plenty in the world that needs fixing. But as is the case with startups - if you try work on everything nothing works. Focused* effort brings about the greatest likelihood of success. *I realize I'm being a bit hypocritical as I'm proposing working on fixing oceans (which will have plenty of added benefits wrt climate change etc.) as a side project to bring about change; in addition to my full time freelance…

Fair point nonetheless, being organized is one of the most important factor.

Re: What fossil fuels are doing to our oceans

#129

Post by TeMPOraL »

anotherturn wrote: post #122
agumonkey wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for a lot of other issues: - society - forest - health - education - thermal insulation - homeless The web make you feel connected .. but to all the wrong projects. I'm going to redirect the efforts toward "physical" change from now on.

There is plenty in the world that needs fixing. But as is the case with startups - if you try work on everything nothing works. Focused* effort brings about the greatest likelihood of success. *I realize I'm being a bit hypocritical as I'm proposing working on fixing oceans (which will have plenty of added benefits wrt climate change etc.) as a side project to bring about change; in addition to my full time freelance…

I agree. But we could use a good summary of what are the most important problems, subdivided into areas that need work / improvement and some estimate of their impact potential, so that people who want to focus on a single thing can choose high-impact things.

Re: What fossil fuels are doing to our oceans

#130

Post by detaro »

anotherturn wrote: post #75
MrQuincle wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically. + Instead of hunting on the seas we should perform aquaculture. Establish diets that can use sea vegetables. Create methods to harvest on sea. This can reduce CO2 in the oceans and reduces the burden on land. + Accelerating research into reducing the CO2 footprint of our food. Lab grown meat and fish needs to be on wafer scales. + Create market places that reduces friction between CO2 producers and CO2 r…

All great suggestions. Something that seems like it could be a side project would be to "Make it easier to find locations for wind mills." I suspect at present the primary limiting factors are locating areas of land that are (1) windy (2) accessible (3) cheap to develop?

The job of finding technically suitable locations is (as far as I know) pretty well covered: it's fairly straightforward meteorology and the industry obviously has a huge interest in getting it right, so they have invested into good tools for it, both for theoretical modeling and for in-the-field evaluation of candidates.

Harder parts are:

* navigating the conflict of interest with/impact on people living nearby, land owners/users, nature, ... to actually get permission to build and operate

* getting locations properly integrated into the grid, since they often are far away from areas using a lot of electricity.

* and of course predicting the legal and market framework for the future, to figure out profitability

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